Actors’ NET of Bucks County revives a Robert Emmet Sherwood classic.
By: Stuart Duncan
If the name of playwright Robert Emmet Sherwood is familiar to you, congratulate yourself on having lived a long time. Sherwood was a giant in his time, a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner with a string of successes that left indelible marks on both stage and screen.
He wrote in that strange, uneasy period between the two World Wars when America and all the world were searching not just for answers, but questions. His interests were truly catholic plays such as Idiot’s Delight and Abe Lincoln in Illinois prove that. So do films such as Rebecca and The Best Years of Our Lives. One of those Pulitzer plays was The Petrified Forest (in 1935). On Broadway it introduced Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard and when the work went to Hollywood, those two went along and were joined by a young Bette Davis. The film version is credited for having set the mold for "gangster films" for years.
Actors’ NET of Bucks County is reviving The Petrified Forest as part of its 10th anniversary season. The work may be 70 years old and perhaps a tiny bit of the dialogue suffers slightly from "gangster tough cutsie," but the evening is far more than a delightful trip down memory lane. It is a primer of what good melodrama was really all about.
To refresh your memories: we are at a gas station and café, the Black Mesa Bar-B-Q, at a lonely crossroads in the eastern Arizona desert. It is autumn in the mid-1930s; the action runs from late afternoon into evening. Sherwood always provides memorable characters; it was an era when casts were large (not hampered by union rules), so this show has 20.
Jason Maple, the proprietor, is nicely played with a touch of stuffiness by Corey Stradling. Gramp Maple, a grizzled old man who remembers when the territory was first settled, even knew Billy the Kid and yearns for those violent days to return, is played by Marco Newton in yet another of his extraordinary character roles. Maple’s daughter Gabby (short for Gabrielle, which represents a nod to her French mother and explains why she dreams of traveling to France to meet her mom) is played with wonderful depth by Kyla Marie Mostello. Shortly we will meet Alan Squier, a world-weary intellectual with little to lose, but much to give (George Hartpence in a role that shows just how fine an actor he really is). Still to come is Duke Mantee (C. Jameson Bradley), the object for an all-out regional manhunt now that he and his gang have murdered six and wounded more in a robbery. Bradley nicely underplays the character (the film rewrote the role for Bogart to become a huge star).
Director Cheryl Doyle has managed to find all of Sherwood’s themes and weave them nicely. Modern man stranded in a lonely world; the worship of big-name criminals (still a staple for afternoon TV shows); intellectuals cursed by endless self-reflections. But she never forgets that at its core, this is a love story, and one you will hold with you for a time.
One more thing the set design and decoration is the best ever at Actors’ NET. Take a moment to look at the wall decorations, all authentic, in period and some quite rare. And don’t miss the chance to see just why Robert Sherwood should be remembered.
The Petrified Forest continues at Actors’ NET of Bucks County, the Heritage Center, 635 N. Delmorr Ave., Morrisville, Pa., through Nov. 13. Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 6 p.m. Tickets cost $15, $13 seniors/children under age 13. For information, call (215) 295-3694. On the Web: www.actorsnetbucks.org

